I'll wait for you when my light goes out
by 823freckles
Summary: James and the other members of the "Ajira Six" deal with the reverse culture shock upon their return to the US. As they drift apart and move on with their lives, will their strange dreams draw them back together? *SPOILERS FOR SEASON 6: THE END*


**Disclaimer: I don't own LOST and certainly don't make any money writing this. I just like to play with Damon and Carlton's toys**.

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There's no lie large enough to explain this away, so they decide on the truth-or at least part of it. In a nod to irony, the Chicago Sun Times dubs them "the Ajira six." The media eats it up.

People Magazine publishes an eight page spread on the miraculous story. Kate Austen: one of the Oceanic six, who survived another aviation tragedy against all odds. Heroic pilot Frank Lapidus, who managed to land his damaged plane on a tiny island in the South Pacific, then make the necessary repairs to take off and bring the survivors to Guam. And the four most miraculous survivors of all: Claire Littleton, James Ford, Neil Frogurt, and Thomas Chang, who lived on the aforementioned unknown and uninhabited island for three years after their own flight Oceanic 815 crashed.

There are questions, of course. How did the passengers of Ajira 316 perish while the plane remained nearly unscathed? How did Claire, James, Neil, and Thomas survive for three years? Did any romance blossom between the island's own Tarzan and Jane: James and Claire?

They have answers. Many unbelted passengers sustained injuries during the rough landing and there was no access to medical care. With an abundant supply of fresh fruits and fish, their wits, and luck. An emphatic "no."

Their answers aren't entirely satisfactory and they are not very forthcoming with those answers. These factors, coupled with the short attention span of contemporary society and the impending presidential election, eventually shift attention from the Ajira Six. There is an inquiry, which fails to even discover the island. In the end, Oceanic and Ajira Airlines provide exorbitant settlements to the six. The media attention peaks again when the District Attorney's office decides to file charges again Kate for violating her probation, but then fades.

Neil Frogurt, also known as Richard Alpert, chooses his and Miles' aliases based on his knowledge of the passengers of 815 who didn't have much family or friends. His choice amuses James, who thinks how different the cool and collected Alpert is from that twitchy pain-in-the-ass. "Neil" receives a phone call twenty-three days after the six arrive in the United States. The shadowy voice on the answering machine says "I knew Neil. You're not Neil." So James' last act as a criminal is to obtain identification papers for "Neil" and "Thomas." Alpert contemplates returning to Spain, but decides to stay in Los Angeles.

"I haven't lived in Spain in hundreds of years. It's just as foreign to me as anywhere else, James," Alpert states.

So James pays his source of false papers an extra thousand to make the last minute change to Alpert's false birth certificate to state that Richard was born in the United States.

Richard and Miles move in together in a modest house in Toluca Lake. James refuses their offer to join them. Claire and her mother, who settle in a Beverly Hills mansion to raise Aaron near Kate, don't offer. With the settlement, James could afford a modest home or a lavish mansion. Heck- he could afford his own private island. But he only wants a little yellow house with sunflowers growing in the garden outside.

Instead he stays in a seedy hotel in the heart of the city. With nothing else to fill his days, he spends the weekdays at Kate's trial or drunk at a local bar.

At night, he dreams.

The nightmares are vivid: his parents float in and out of the dreams. Like the old nightmare, he is a child again, hiding under his bed, watching the pool of blood below his father crawl like a living thing towards his paralyzed form.

When the blood reaches his hands, sickly warm and reeking of metal, he looks down. He realizes that his knuckles are covered with hair, the fingers much too large for a small boy. Bewildered and terrified, he crawls out from under the bed. The body on the floor isn't that of his father.

It's Juliet.

This is when he wakes in a cold sweat without fail every night.

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**Should I continue? Please review! I don't want to be one of those writers who threatens not to write when they don't get reviews, but I really don't know if I should continue with this. So if you want more, you gotta tell me! **


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